The 1938 German football championship, the 31st edition of the competition, was won by Hannover 96, the club's first-ever German championship, by defeating Schalke 04 4–3 after extra time in the final. The 1938 final had to be replayed because the first game had ended in a three-all draw after extra time. For Hannover 96 it marked the first of two national championships, the second coming in 1954, while, for Schalke, it was a short setback in the club's most successful era, having won the 1934, 1935 and 1937 final and going on to win the 1939, 1940 and 1942 ones as well.[1][2][3]

The 1938 edition was only the second, after 1922, when a replay of the final was required.[1] FC Schalke 04 entered the final as heavy favourites, having won the national championship in the previous season.[4] In the first game Schalke twice took the lead, 2–0 and 3–1 before Erich Meng equalised in the 87th minute. No goals were scored in extra time, making a replay necessary.[5] The second game, one week later, saw Hannover take the lead before Schalke went ahead twice again only for Hannover to equalise once again in the 87th minute. In the following extra time Erich Meng scored the decisive goal in the 117th minute, giving Hannover its first national title.[6] Erich Meng, who, together with his brother Richard, played a big part in the title win for Hannover, was killed in action less than two years later in the Second World War.[4]

The sixteen 1937–38Gauliga champions competed in a group stage of four groups of four teams each, with the group winners advancing to the semi-finals. The two semi-final winners then contested the 1938 championship final.[8]

From the following season, the German championship expanded to eighteen clubs and continued to increase in numbers through a combination of territorial expansion of Nazi Germany and the sub-dividing of the Gauligas. In later years, the number of Gauligas reached a strength of thirty one in its last completed season, 1943–44.[9]

1.
FC Schalke 04
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The 04 in the clubs name derives from its formation in 1904. Schalke play in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the German football league system, as of December 2015, the club has 140,000 members, making it the second-largest sports club in Germany and the sixth-largest sports club in the world in terms of membership. Other activities offered by the club include athletics, basketball, handball, table tennis, winter sports, founded in 1904, Schalke has won seven German championships, five DFB-Pokals, one DFL-Supercup and one UEFA Cup. Since 2001, Schalkes stadium is the Veltins-Arena, Schalke was ranked as the seventh-best football team in Europe by UEFAs 2015 UEFA club rankings. In terms of operating income, Schalke possesses the seventh-highest operating income of any club at $64.4 million or £38.2 million. Schalke also generates the 14th-highest revenue of any club, at $265.6 million or £157.8 million. In May 2014, Schalke 04 were ranked by Forbes magazine as the 14th-most valuable football club, at £355 million or $599 million, the club was founded on 4 May 1904 as Westfalia Schalke by a group of high school students and first wore the colours red and yellow. The team was unable to gain admittance to the Westdeutscher Spielverband, in 1912, after years of failed attempts to join the official league, they merged with the gymnastic club Schalker Turnverein 1877 in order to facilitate their entry. This arrangement held up until 1915 when SV Westfalia Schalke was re-established as an independent club, the separation proved short-lived and the two came together again in 1919 as Turn- und Sportverein Schalke 1877. The new club won its first honours in 1923 as champions of the Schalke Kreisliga, in 1924, the football team parted ways with the gymnasts again, this time taking the club chairman along with them. They took the name FC Schalke 04 and adopted the now familiar blue, the following year, the club became the dominant local side, based on a style of play that used short, sharp, man-to-man passing to move the ball. This system would become famous as the Schalker Kreisel. In 1927, it carried them into the top-flight Gauliga Ruhr, onto the league championship, the popular club built a new stadium, the Glückauf-Kampfbahn, in 1928, and acknowledged the citys support by renaming themselves FC Gelsenkirchen-Schalke 04. However, the ban had little impact on the popularity, in their first game after the ban against Fortuna Düsseldorf, in June 1931. The clubs fortunes begun to rise from 1931 and they made a appearance in the 1932 German championship. The year after, the club went all the way to the final and this league saw Schalkes most successful decade in their history, from 1933 to 1942, the club would appear in 14 of 18 national finals and win their league in every one of its eleven seasons. Schalkes first national title came in 1934 with a 2–1 victory over favourites 1, the next year, they successfully defended their title against VfB Stuttgart with a 6–4 win. The club missed the 1936 final, but would make appearances in the match in each of the next six years

2.
Hamburger SV
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Hamburger Sport-Verein e. V. commonly known as Hamburger SV, Hamburg or HSV, is a German sport club based in Hamburg, its largest branch being its football department. HSVs football team has the distinction of having played continuously in the top tier of the German football league system since the end of World War I. It is the team that has played in every season of the Bundesliga since its foundation in 1963. HSV has won the German national championship six times, the DFB-Pokal three times and the League Cup twice. The teams most successful period was from the mid-1970s until the mid-1980s when, in addition to several domestic honours, they won the 1976–77 European Cup Winners Cup and their outstanding player was German national star Felix Magath. To date, HSVs last major trophy was the 1986–87 DFB-Pokal, HSV play their home games at the Volksparkstadion in Bahrenfeld, a western district of Hamburg. The club colours are blue, white and black but the home kit of the team is white jerseys. The teams most common nickname is die Rothosen, as it is one of Germanys oldest clubs, it is also known as der Dinosaurier. HSV have rivalries with Werder Bremen, with whom they contest the Nordderby, and Hamburg-based FC St. Pauli, HSV is notable in football as a grassroots organisation with youth development a strong theme. The club had a team in the Womens Bundesliga from 2003 to 2012, other club departments include badminton, baseball, basketball, bowling, boxing, cricket, darts, hockey, golf, gymnastics, handball and cardiopulmonary rehabilitation exercises. These departments represent about 10% of the club membership, HSV is one of the biggest sports clubs in Germany with over 70,000 members in all its departments and stated by Forbes to be among the 20-largest football clubs in the world. This was the first of three clubs merged on 2 June 1919 to create HSV in its present form. HSV in its club statute recognises the founding of SC Germania as its own date of origin, the other two clubs in the June 1919 merger were Hamburger FC founded in 1888 and FC Falke Eppendorf dating back to 1906. The merger came about because the three clubs had been weakened by the impact of the First World War on manpower and finance. SC Germania was formed originally as a club and did not begin to play football until 1891. SC Germania had its first success in 1896, winning the Hamburg-Altona championship for the first of five times, Hamburger SC1888 was founded by students on 1 June 1888. It later had links with a team called FC Viktoria 95 and. SC Germania and Hamburger SC1888 were among 86 clubs who founded the Deutscher Fußball-Bund in Leipzig on 28 January 1900, FC Falke was founded by students in Eppendorf on 5 March 1906 but it was never a successful team and played in lower leagues

3.
Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943

4.
VfB Stuttgart
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Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart 1893 e. V. commonly known as VfB Stuttgart, is a German sports club based in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. The club is best known for its team which is part of Germanys second division 2. VfB Stuttgart has won the championship five times, most recently in 2006–07. The football team plays its games at the Mercedes-Benz Arena. Second team side VfB Stuttgart II currently plays in the Regionalliga Südwest, the clubs junior teams have won the national U19 championships a record ten times and the Under 17 Bundesliga six times. A membership-based club with over 50,0000 members, VfB is the largest sports club in Baden-Württemberg and it has departments for fistball, hockey, track and field, table-tennis and football referees, all of which compete only at the amateur level. The club also maintains a department, the VfB-Garde. Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart was formed through 2 April 1912 merger of predecessor sides Stuttgarter FV, Stuttgarter Fußballverein was founded at the Zum Becher hotel in Stuttgart on 9 September 1893. FV were initially a rugby club, playing games at Stöckach-Eisbahn before moving to Cannstatter Wasen in 1894, the rugby club established a football section in 1908. Rugby was soon replaced by football within the club, as found the game too complicated to follow. In 1909, FV joined the Süddeutschen Fußballverband, playing in the second tier B-Klasse and they eventually advanced to the senior Südkreis-Liga in 1912. Cannstatter Fußballklub was formed as a club in 1890 and also quickly established a football team. This club was dissolved after just a few years of play, the new team joined the Süddeutschen Fußballverband as a second division club and won promotion in 1904. Krone possessed their own ground, which exists today as the home of TSV Münster. The club also made appearances in the final rounds of the SFV in the late 1920s. In 1933, VfB moved to Neckar Stadium, the site of its current ground, German football was re-organized that same year under the Third Reich into sixteen top-flight divisions called Gauligen. The club had a rivalry with Stuttgarter Kickers throughout this period. After a third-place result at the level in 1937, Stuttgart was not able to advance out of the preliminary rounds in subsequent appearances

5.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan

6.
Eintracht Frankfurt
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The club was founded in 1899 and have won one German championship, four DFB-Pokals and one UEFA Cup. Since 1925, their stadium has been the Waldstadion, which since 1 July 2005, has been called Commerzbank-Arena for sponsorship reasons, both clubs were founding members of the new Nordkreis-Liga in 1909. In turn, Frankfurter FV joined the gymnastics club Frankfurter Turngemeinde von 1861 to form TuS Eintracht Frankfurt von 1861 in 1920. Through the late 1920s and into the 1930s, Eintracht won a handful of local and regional championships, first in the Kreisliga Nordmain, then in the Bezirksliga Main and Bezirksliga Main-Hessen. Eintracht picked up where left off after World War II, playing as a solid side in the first division Oberliga Süd. Eintracht lost 3–7 to Real Madrid in a final that was widely regarded as one of the best football matches ever played. The side continued to play football and earned themselves a place as one of the original 16 teams selected to play in the Bundesliga, Germanys new professional football league. Eintracht played Bundesliga football for 33 seasons, finishing in the top half of the table for the majority of them and their best Bundesliga performances were five third-place finishes, they ended just two points back of champion VfB Stuttgart in 1991–92. The team also avoided relegation on several occasions. In 1984, they defeated MSV Duisburg 6–1 on aggregate, FC Saarbrücken 4–1 on aggregate, in two-game playoffs. Eintracht finally slipped and were relegated to 2, at the time that they were sent down alongside 1. FC Kaiserslautern, these teams were two of four sides that had been in the Bundesliga since the leagues inaugural season. It looked as though they would be out again in 1998–99, FC Nürnberg unexpectedly lost at home to give Eintracht the break they needed to stay up. The club was plagued by financial difficulties again in 2004 before once more being relegated, between 1997 and 2005, Eintracht has bounced between the top two divisions. The 2010–11 season ended with the clubs fourth Bundesliga relegation, after setting a new record for most points in the first half of the season, the club struggled after the winter break. After seven games without scoring a goal, coach Michael Skibbe was doubted, the change, however, did little to change Eintrachts fortunes, as the club achieved only three draws out of the last seven games and were subsequently relegated on the 34th matchday. One year later, Eintracht defeated Alemannia Aachen 3–0 on the 32nd match day of the 2011–12 season, in 2015–16, Eintracht had the 19th-highest attendance in Europe, ahead of such prominent clubs as Atlético Madrid, Celtic and Paris Saint-Germain. The club has enjoyed success in competition outside the Bundesliga

7.
Hannover 96
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Hannoverscher Sportverein von 1896, commonly referred to as Hannover 96, Hannover, HSV or simply 96, is a German association football club based in the city of Hanover, Lower Saxony. Hannover 96 play in the 2, Bundesliga, the second tier in the German football league system. Hannover 96 was founded in 1896, Hannover have won two German championships and one DFB-Pokal. Hannover 96 has a rivalry with VfL Wolfsburg and Eintracht Braunschweig. The club was founded on 12 April 1896 as Hannoverscher Fußball-Club 1896, upon the suggestion of Ferdinand-Wilhelm Fricke and their initial enthusiasm was for athletics and rugby, football did not become their primary interest until 1899. Most of the membership of Germania 1902 Hannover became part of 96 in 1902, in 1913, they merged with Ballverein 1898 Hannovera to become Hannoverscher Sportverein 1896. Hannoverscher FCs colours were black-white-green, but they played in blue, the newly united team kept black-white-green as the club colours, but they chose to take to the field in red, giving the team the nickname Die Roten. The teams third jersey is in the official colours. HSV continued to field strong sides and make national level appearances on into the 1920s, under the Third Reich, German football was re-organized into 16 top-flight leagues in 1933 and Hannover became part of the Gauliga Niedersachsen. They appeared in the final rounds in 1935 and sent representatives to the national side the next year. They won their first national championship in 1938 in what was one of the biggest upsets in German football history when they beat Schalke 04, the two sides played to a 3–3 draw before Hannover prevailed 4–3 in a tension filled re-match. In 1942, the moved to the newly formed Gauliga Braunschweig-Südhannover. Like most other German organizations, the club was dissolved after World War II by occupying Allied authorities. A combined local side was assembled in August 1945 and the month a mixed group of players from Hannover 96. HSV was later formally re-established as Hannoverscher SV on 11 November 1945 before re-adopting its traditional name on 27 April 1946, the club resumed league play in 1947 in the first division Oberliga Nord and was relegated, but quickly returned to the top-flight in 1949. Hannover 96s next appearance in a final would not come until 1954 when they soundly defeated 1. The beaten side included five of the players who would go on later that year to win Germanys first World Cup in a surprise victory known as the Miracle of Bern. In 1963, the Bundesliga, Germanys new professional football league, Hannover played in the Regionalliga Nord that season, but earned promotion to the senior circuit in the following year

1900s typical mining structure in the Ruhr, source of the Schalke nickname Die Knappen – from an old German word for "miners"– because the team drew so many of its players and supporters from the coalmine workers of Gelsenkirchen.